


Breath and Mortar

by Laylah



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: Heresy, M/M, Zombies, misuse of the Dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-16
Updated: 2010-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:06:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is one force in Lea Monde that binds all things together, and gives them form.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breath and Mortar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GlassShard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassShard/gifts).



There should be light. One last wrenching pain, one final stroke of the Riskbreaker's sword, parts Grissom's soul from its fleshly cage, and then -- then _nothing_, no path opening, no welcome home to Heaven. No sense of Duane's presence to guide him where he's meant to be. The breath-steaming chill of Lea Monde's cursed forest fades away, but nothing comes to replaces it.

Fear is a strange thing, without a heart to quicken, without palms to sweat, but it is the only word for what Grissom feels now. Has he damned himself? The Dark clawed at his body when he summoned the Crusader to fight at his side, scourging payment from his flesh; does it cling still to his soul to keep him here?

The idea is abominable. He is no heretic, like his quarry! His faith is not so weak. His faith -- Grissom prays, as his senses dim and he loses sight of the forest. _O holy St. Iocus, blessed art -- in our time of trial, thou hast -- humbly in thy footsteps --_

He has known his catechism by heart since he was a boy, but now he finds the words ebbing away from him just as his heart's blood has. _No_, he thinks, making that one word a prayer alone, a ward to keep back the all-devouring Dark. _No. I will not end like this._

Time is nothing in this cold limbo; there are no breaths to count, no sun's passage to track, only his endless battle of wills with a force too vast and strange to grasp. Grissom has no way to determine how long he spends in that state before he feels a change: something tugging at him, pulling him downward. For there to be enough of _him_ to pull seems like a mercy, and he clings to it with all the determination that remains in him. He holds tight to his certainty of self, insistent; he will not disappear.

When he opens his eyes, he rejoices: he has eyes to open. His body is slow to respond, but with an effort of will he rises from the cold earth; his limbs will bear him. And the wood itself --

Where before the wood doubled back on itself, made fey and strange by the power of the Dark, now it bewitches his senses no longer. There is a path winding plainly through the trees, away from the site of his disgrace, back into the cursed city. Grissom follows the path set by the snowflies, and if his feet tread the path unevenly, if his steps still falter, it matters little enough. He has not been defeated. Lea Monde shall not break him.

The city is...changed, when he finds himself again surrounded by its walls. How could it have been so silent before? The very stones hiss and hum with power, with strange voices. The Dark is like a living presence within it, breathing through every space in the city, the mortar that holds the walls -- the remaining walls -- in place. Some of its whispers, even, are intelligible -- _Ware the others_, it tells him; _be vigilant, if thou wouldst keep thy grip on that flesh_. Grissom shudders, stumbles forward. He knows, does not need any of the unholy sorcery of Lea Monde to tell him that he is in danger here.

He is still unprepared for it the first time he encounters Lea Monde's dead, lurching from the shadows of the undercity and reaching out to him. He can _feel_ what is wrong with them now, can sense the ease with which those lost souls would come unstrung from borrowed rotting flesh. The power for that belongs to him, does it not? The power to exorcise, to condemn the damned. He will not allow them to stand in his way.

Still his limbs are too slow, too awkward; he carries a fine mace but his arms feel weak and unresponsive. The first of the Cold Ones to reach him falls to his blows, but there are others; he would speak a prayer, a banishing, but his tongue is thick and leaden in his mouth. Damn this place, and damn the Dark, for the ways it seeks to hinder him!

The Cold Ones clutch at him, pulling at his garb, groaning. They are long past intelligible speech, long past showing any spark of true life in their eyes, but Grissom can feel their want as their failing hands paw at him: they seek his flesh, in the most base and animal sense; they covet what remains to him, as they have lost it and know no higher solace.

The curses he would speak weigh down his tongue; all he can manage is a mere shadow of a command. "Away," he tells them. "Back," and "You will not," but he spends as much of his will fighting against his own flesh as against theirs.

It is not his doing, then, that causes them to recoil from him, that causes them to shrink away and stagger back as quickly as their rotting limbs will carry them. No; the sense of a presence is plain enough for Grissom to taste it as well, a taste of old blood and rotting power, cloying in the back of his throat. Some greater wickedness comes.

A greater wickedness made only moreso by the way its form is fair -- the damned prophet himself, the heretic, watching Grissom from a doorway. He shines pale in the dim light here, and yet the misleading light of his earthly form is eclipsed by the nimbus of the Dark wrapped around him.

"Fiend," Grissom slurs. He will hold his ground; he will not retreat before the damned.

Sydney hides a remorseless, feline smile behind his wicked claws. "Poor little lamb," he says, and his voice drips with pity that cannot be sincere. "Of all the fates to befall a churchman." He paces forward, unconcerned for his own safety; his bare skin shows no mark of their confrontation. He is whole and unblemished, not so much as a scratch from the battle that nearly laid Grissom low. "Sometimes, I think Fate plays this game to make fools of us all."

"Riddles," Grissom says. He shifts his grip on his mace, shakes his head. "You will not confuse me so."

"I have no need," Sydney says, and the laughter lies just beneath the surface of his voice. "You are not such a crucial player in my game; only a poor lost soul, dancing to the Dark's tune as we all must within these walls."

Grissom bares his teeth, chokes on the impulse to lunge at the heretic and savage him bodily. "I am not, and I shall not do any such thing," he insists.

Sydney smiles, drifting yet closer -- as if to tempt him, that bare flesh on display, unmarked when it should bleed and tear. Grissom shudders at the intensity of the need. "No?" Sydney asks. "What do you think you have done, then? Do you believe yourself less damned than your fellows, simply because the flesh you wear was once yours by right?" He reaches out with one silver claw, and Grissom strikes his hand away. It rings hollow, as if there is no mortal flesh to fill the armor.

"Lies," Grissom says. "You seek to confuse me, heretic."

"Poor lost lamb," Sydney says again. He looks down, pointedly, and Grissom follows his gaze without intending to; there is a fresh wound in the flesh of Grissom's arm, where Sydney's claws caught in his skin. There is no bleeding, only the split skin and bared meat beneath; there is no pain at all.

"What have you done?" Grissom asks. "You -- you have done this. You have bewitched me." He holds out his torn arm. "You know the healing arts," he says. "If you would prove yourself innocent --"

"Then I should cast you out of that borrowed flesh, and set it free?" Sydney says. He shakes his head. "You would not thank me for that, truly, would you?"

Grissom snarls, and stops himself when he hears how it sounds, inhuman and feral. "More lies," he says. "I have seen your power."

"You are cold, my dear Father," Sydney says. "I can no more heal your wounds than I can turn the sun about in its course." He lays the palm of one gauntlet against Grissom's skin; it should likely feel chilled, but there is nothing of the sort, only pressure, and that still faint. "There is no healing for a body that has already succumbed to death."

"Do not taunt me," Grissom says; it sounds more a plea than a command.

The Dark moves around Sydney, around them both, a wild power hissing and whispering, circling them like a serpent. "Believe me when I say I do not," Sydney murmurs. "Or if you cannot take me on faith --" again his tone is too light, too near to laughing; he has no mercy in his blackened soul -- "then allow me to show you."

He closes his hand, curving the vicious tips of those claws inward; Grissom can see them sinking into his flesh but the pain he is waiting for will not come. Instead, Sydney breathes something low and sibilant, some word better lost than known, and the power of the Dark swirls tight around his hand, follows the path made by Sydney's claws to slither heavy and viscous into Grissom's veins. The Dark itself moves within him, writhing beneath his skin, a heady and terrible power. Where it had seemed a violent invasion before, when he attempted that summoning, now it moves within him like -- like a lover, the Dark caressing places inside him that should be untouchable. It wraps itself through every fiber of his flesh, threads through muscle and coils comfortably around organs, makes itself the marrow of his bones and clouds the air that fills his lungs.

"Stop," Grissom says, but weakly; his voice has no strength that is not of the Dark, and his flesh is given over to it. That power is his to use, and by the same token he cannot escape it; they are bound together, the Dark animating his body and his soul struggling to hold tight to his flesh. "This cannot be," he says. "Sydney, do not --"

"I have only given you time," Sydney tells him, and the gentleness in his voice is a terrible thing. "Untrained, unused to the Dark, you had little hope of harnessing enough of it to hold this vessel together for long. Now..." He shrugs one unblemished fair shoulder, and smiles faintly. "Now, perhaps your body will last you until this charade is over."

"What have you done?" Grissom demands. He clutches at Sydney's arm, but his fingers find no purchase on the metal.

"Little enough," Sydney murmurs. "So far." He stretches up to kiss Grissom's brow, one final mockery, and then he is gone.


End file.
